


A Moment

by spanglemaker9



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-26 23:14:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5024395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spanglemaker9/pseuds/spanglemaker9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what happens when you scroll through tumblr right before bed. Drabbles appear on your phone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Moment

Of course it had to be this.

This moment.

This dress.

This dress featured in one of the happiest nights of his life. Now it featured in one of his darkest moments.

Both times, it wasn't the dress, but what the dress represented. Emma, in this pale pink, pretty dress, ready and eager for their first date. She was every fresh, lovely thing he never thought himself worthy of. All night, he'd been afraid to touch her for fear his filthy sailor's hands would sully her. Even though those days were behind him, he never could shake this belief that he was unworthy. But love doesn't care whether you deserve it or not. Love wants what it wants, no matter how far out of reach it is.

Later, she'd reached for him, kissed him, made him realize that perhaps he wasn’t such a lost cause after all. Her eyes told him how much she wanted him, just not now, not here, not like this. That tiny tantalizing taste of her lovely perfection had been all he'd needed. He could live forever on the promise of that burgeoning kiss.

She chose _this_ to wear before him as the Dark One. This dress, out of everything she could have picked, every moment they had shared.

She knew.

The Dark One had seen into his soul, the most vulnerable part of him. The secret longing he kept hidden from the world. That memory was his treasure, his weakness, and she knew it, because she herself was it. She knew where that weakness lay, no matter how deeply he'd hidden it. But there was no hiding from the Dark One. She reached inside him, plucked that precious, lovely memory free from his soul, and twisted it for her own purposes. Everything The Dark One did was for her own selfish ends.

And now that moment—that shimmering night when it seemed that after 300 hopeless years, his unworthy self might know happiness...love—that moment had been twisted into a tool, a weapon.

Once again, the Dark One forced him into ruthless choices. He had to crush this moment before she could use it to ensnare him. There would be other moments, he told himself, as he uttered that heresy, "I _loved_ you." He had to believe that or all his long years of surviving just to find her had been in vain. It seemed her mother's infernal, eternal optimism had infected him, too, because he wrapped himself in hope as he broke both their hearts. His Emma, the woman from that perfect night of pink dresses and stolen kisses, was in there somewhere, underneath this hard, glittering shell of the Dark One.

He'd vanquish this foe, the battle he seemed to have been put on this earth to wage eternally, and they would find their way back to each other. They would build new moments, they would finally do more than hope for the future. They'd live it. But not yet. Not now. Now his job was to ruthlessly crush their past under his heel so the Dark One could get no purchase in his soul. He would be strong enough to kill them so that they might live again.

Was that hope or foolish desperation? It didn't matter, for once again, now more than ever, the Dark One had to die so that he could live.  



End file.
